Hydross the Unstable
Hydross the Unstable is the first boss of Serpentshrine Cavern in Coilfang Reservoir. He seems to have lost his sanity as a result of being held prisoner by Lady Vashj. He is kept in check by the two beams in his prison. If he leaves them, he becomes poisoned, causing him great pain. Although being the first boss raids meet when entering the instance, the Lurker Below is an easier kill, and it's possible to sneak past Hydross. Therefore new raids usually try Hydross second. Abilities *Summon elementals: Whenever Hydross switches form he summons 4 elementals matching his new form *Immune to taunt *Enrages after 10 minutes Water form *Melee: 5.5k frost damage base, cannot be blocked, cannot crush *Immune to frost damage *Mark of Hydross: 15 sec cooldown, raid-wide debuff, stacks up to 6 times, increase frost damage by 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 percent. 30 sec duration, refreshes on each application *Water Tomb: single-target 8 yard AoE, cast every 7 seconds. Stuns all affected players for 4 seconds and deals 4500 frost damage over 5 seconds Poison form *Melee: 5k nature damage base, cannot be blocked, cannot crush *Immune to nature damage *Mark of Corruption: 15 sec cooldown, raid-wide debuff, stacks up to 6 times, increase nature damage by 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 percent. 30 sec duration, refreshes on each application *Vile Sludge: Single target debuff, 15 sec cooldown. 4k nature damage over 24 sec, and reduces healing and damage done by 50%. Elemental Adds * Health: ~50K * Damage: ~6K Frost/Nature base melee damage * Immune to nature/frost damage Preparation Raid Composition *1 main Tank with maxed frost resistance (see Hydross Resistance Gear) *1 main Tank with maxed nature resistance (see Hydross Resistance Gear) *2-4 offtanks with some assortment of nature and frost resistance gear *6-8 healers *11-14 damage dealers (any mix of melee and ranged will do) The frost tank has to take slightly more damage than the nature tank. Positioning The melee group needs to move with Hydross, on each phase change a few yards forward and backward. All other raid members should set up distributed, to reduce the effect of Water Tomb. It's also no problem to run through Hydross and set up in his back. Starting the Fight Prior to the pull a small group (one off-tank, a few damage dealers and a healer) need to pull and kill enough of the tainted water elementals on the "assembly line", so that none of them take part in the fight as adds. After the fight has started the tainted water elementals stop spawning. Hydross starts in his water form. Whenever he leaves the area where he stands initially, he switches to the poison form. When hes's moved back into the two beams, he switches back to the water form. Form switching takes place whenever he crosses a "magic boundary" which runs aproximately between the two small flags in front of him. Every time he switches form, four adds of the same type as his new form are summoned. If pulled conventionally, Hydross would immediately switch to the poison form and summons adds. The safest method to avoid this is to use a Lesser Invisibility Potion. The frost tank has to wait until he drops out of combat (because he is in combat due to the assembly line adds being killed), use the potion, walk into melee range and start the fight from there. Another possibility is to use a combination of Swiftness Potion and Intercept, to reach him fast enough before he crosses the boundary. If a feral tank, feral charge is sufficient to safely engage him, letting you start with a full rage bar. Switching Form Due to the stacking debuff, the damage taken by the tank sooner or later reaches levels where he simply gets one-shotted. Usually 100% damage increase is the limit, in water form this means 22k crits are possible. Thus after 60 seconds (= four debuffs), it's time for the current tank to move backward and pull Hydross over the boundary. This is a most critical moment, because immediately after a form switch Hydross resets his aggro list and summons four adds. There must be no DoTs on him and all DPS and healing must stop for a few seconds to give the tanks time to gain control of Hydross and the adds. If some raid member on the wrong side of the boundary draws aggro so that Hydross moves back over the boundary, he switches form again and summons four more adds (= wipe). In water form he should be tanked at his initial position. There's a step running in front of his initial position, which forms an angle. Just down the step near that angle is a good tanking position for the poison form. Elemental Adds Quickly killing the four elemental adds is a key to success in this fight. Good tanking coupled with solid AoE damage is the fastest solution, particularly if the AoE also includes Hydross. The optimal approach to this would be two Paladin tanks, one in Nature and one in Frost resistance gear. Unfortunately raids will rarely ever boast this luxury, therefore most groups will have to find their own solutions to the problem. Druid tanks work well, some combination of AoE and emergency "point" tanking by warriors does the job too. Resist gear is also useful on the add tanks. The faster the adds are killed, the less damage they do (since their damage is increased by the raid-wide debuff too). Notes *On the initial phase switch, Hydross should be at 80% or lower. If that's not the case, the raids DPS may be too low to kill him before the enrage *A hunters Frost Trap in Hydross's path while switching to poison form slows him for a few seconds and delays the adds spawn, which makes them easier to control *If he's at 15% or lower after a switch, it's possible to use all high damage abilities and trinkets, CC the adds and nuke Hydross to end the fight in that phase *If the entire raid moves to the correct side of the platform, the danger of Hydross aggroing a player on the wrong side and switch form again is nonexistent. Loot Quotes "I cannot allow you to interfere!" (entering combat) "Aaghh, the poison..." (Nature phase) "Better, much better." (Frost phase) "They have forced me to this..." (killing a player - clean) "I have no choice." (killing a player - clean) "I am... released..." (dying - clean) "You are no better than they!" (killing a player - corrupt) "I will purge you from this place." (killing a player - corrupt) "You are the disease, not I" (dying - corrupt) Bugs Using a pathing exploit, an affliction speced Warlock can solo Hydross. Patches and Hotfixes First kills External links Category:Water Elementals Category:Bosses Category:Serpentshrine Cavern mobs